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It Was Fifty Years Ago Today... Sgt Pepper and Beyond
A documentation of the influences that went on to help create the seminal album, Sgt Pepper's lonely hearts club band.
6 September 1943, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
23 August 1946, Wembley, London, England, UK
25 February 1943, Liverpool, Merseyside, England, UK
24 November 1941, Madras, India
July 28, 1943 in Hatch End, Middlesex [now in Harrow, London], England, UK
April 13, 1943 in Ryde, Isle of Wight, England, UK
August 4, 1946 in Liverpool, England, UK
May 25, 2017
There isn't a single note of the actual album to be heard, nor any images of the record itself and its famed cover art.May 26, 2017
This is the most frustrating film. It's probably no fault of the makers, but it's rare to have to assess a documentary for what it doesn't have.May 26, 2017
It's not easy to make a documentary about the greatest album in history when you don't have access to a single note of the music, but this documentary forges on and cashes in regardless ...May 16, 2017
Even blessed with such a rich subject and vast reserves of archive footage, It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! still has the threadbare feel of an unauthorized cash-in.May 25, 2017
Alan G Parker's film is an overlong, tedious parade of familiar talking heads (Hunter Davies, Pete Best) trotting out familiar anecdotes and, significantly for a film about an album, there's not a note of Beatles music.May 26, 2017
With a two-hour bombardment of talking heads of varying relevance, Parker tries gamely, but fails resoundingly, to overcome his documentary's glaring paradox - that it's a film about music containing no music.May 22, 2017
What's the point in making a documentary about a classic album if you don't have the rights to any of the music?